You know what’s cool? Sky pirates and massive spells and that Granblue Fantasy: Relinkis a JRPG that is ticking off many of the actionRPGtropes. It would be in danger of becoming workmanlike, such are the number of things you can tick off on your fingers like a plumber ordering parts: boss fights against improbably huge glowing monsters, an evil god, catboys, numbers popping off enemies, women who appreciate the combat applications of a thigh-high split skirt, anachronistic sunglasses, horned giants carrying halberds of the same approximate size as a caravan....

Open to adventurous fans We’ve eschewed any Valentine’s theming this year, but Edwin put this in our news queue last night as a sort of dare for our evening shift, and let the record show I am less of a coward than Graham Smith.The Cosmic Wheel Sisterhood, avisual novelTarot-themed card game from perennial (perhaps perineal, in this case) favourites Deconstructeam, was praised by Edwinin his review, and I was going to use the same strapline for this news post had he not got there first....

It also lays the groundwork for future server improvements Helldivers 2might be aco-op shooter mixed with comedy genius, but its launch has been blighted by bugs and crashes. Over the past week the devs have deployedserver hotfixesand matchmaking tweaks, although one server and rewards patch had to berolled back to fix “significant” performance issues. Still, they’re doing their utmost as the game becomes PlayStation’sbiggest PC release to date. And the latest patch brings with it a slew of crash fixes, reductions to disconnects, further tweaks to matchmaking, and preps things for future server improvements....

Need a hint for Connections? Read our guide for help with Connections #248 This guide is for a previous day! Looking for today’s solution? Check out theConnections hint and answers for Thursday 12th December! Want a hint for Connections today?Piggybacking off the monumental success of daily puzzle gameWordle, the New York Times has another fantastically popular word game out now. It’s calledConnections, and if you haven’t played it before, now’s the time to start....

A time-travelling tale for old timers Oh sorry, I rhetorically lost myself for a minute there! I’m supposed to be telling you aboutTerra Memoria, a newRPGfeaturing time travel, magic crystals and animal wizards. Here’s a trailer. The areas from the Steam demo put me strongly in mind ofGrandia- characters and objects have similar proportions, and there’s a familiar hurly-burly to the town scenes - though the combat is rather more measured, with characters forming neat ranks and spaffing spells at each other according to an initiative bar at the bottom....

The Ryzen 7 7800X3D offers legendarily good performance at mid-level prices. I’m currently running a Ryzen 7 7800X3D in my gaming PC and it’s proven extremely capable of driving games at high refresh rates, even boosting some esports titles beyond the 360fps I can benefit from with my current OLED monitor. Thanks to its powerful Zen 4 architecture paired with an oversized L3 cache - the latter of which is signified by the X3D suffix - this is a capable option at any resolution, and generally shifts the bottleneck back onto your graphics card....

A great price for a powerful graphics card with DLSS 3. The RTX 4070 Super is a rather good deal, offering a significant boost in gaming performance over the earlier RTX 4070 - in fact, it’s closer to the 4070 Ti than the vanilla 4070. That makes it a great choice for gaming up to 4K, while costing just a bit over the £500 mark - £539 to be accurate after a £50 discount that puts it below the UK RRP of £579....

It doesn’t capture the “spirit” of the full thing, apparently TheSilent Hill 2remake’s State of Play trailer doesn’t give a full and proper representation of the game, Bloober Team’s president Piotr Babieno has observed in an apparent swipe at publisher Konami, who Babieno portrays as responsible for the upcominghorrorgame’s marketing. If you missed it, the trailer in question focuses on the “modernised” combat. It shows alleged “everyman” protagonist James Sunderland getting all Gears of Warry with some maggoty marionettes and rancid demon nurses....

New ways for Sims to represent more of the world A new update forThe Sims 4has added options to give characters vitiligo, the autoimmune disorder which causes patches of skin to lose pigmentation. Rather than a handful of preset full-body patterns, The Sims 4’s vitiligo impressively comes as loads of patterns for separate bodyparts, so you can create a wide range of effects. And no, you don’t need to buy an expansion for it....

By which they mean low wages A number of Ubisoft France employees are on strike today after the collapse of union negotiations with Ubisoft management, who have reportedly proposed a budget for wages “that would be lower than inflation for the second year in a row”. The strikers are calling it a “badly balanced rewards system”. Cheeky devils! The news comes care of apostfrom Le Syndicat des Travailleurs et Travailleuses du Jeu Vidéo, who have evidently been doing their homework on videogame humour....

Vote now as we continue deciding the single best thing in games Last time, we conducted citizen science with a rare suggestion from a reader, and you decided thatbeing able to reroll your build is better than instant-death bottomless pits. May you live a long and happy live refining by degrees, rather than slamming into hard lessons. This week, in celebration of Valentine’s Day, we turn to matters of the heart, of loves and organs....

The RPS Treehouse goes head to head By now you’ll probably have read quite a bit about ourpreview adventuresin Inflexion Games' upcoming fantasy survival adventureNightingale- including our slightly raucous attempts tointerview CEO Aaryn Flynnwhile instant KO-ing tree monsters and abusing our supplies of ice bullets. But outside this guided co-op session, several members of the RPS Treehouse were playing it on their lonesome last week, too, getting to grips withNightingale’s particular flavour of sticks-and-stones crafting, cooking up meat and berry wraps to keep ourselves fed, and generally being cajoled and maybe even lightly seduced by our fae Shakespearean guide, Puck....

Stuck on the Wordle word for February 14? Read our hint or find the answer below! This guide is for a previous day! Looking for today’s solution? Check out theWordle hint and answer for Thursday 12th December! Need a hint for today’s Wordle answer?We have you covered with a list of hints to help you maintain that precious streak. Every day,Wordlepresents its legions of players with a deviously simple quandary: can you guess the right five-letter word within just six guesses?...